Not Quite For Russian Juniors

I was leaning toward Russia in today’s World Junior semi finals action against Sweden, mainly because Luci’s Russian, and of course the idea of a possible Canada-Russia gold medal match-up.

Even though the true Canada-Russia novelty wore off years ago.

Canada still needs to beat Finland later today and Russia needed to overcome a strong Swedish bunch, which they didn’t do. So the original plan is out the window.

It wasn’t to be for the Russian juniors as Sweden held on for a 2-1 win, and it’s not the end of the world for me, considering a couple of Swedes are Habs draft choices, including big Jacob De La Rose, a 6’03” 187 lb left winger, and right winger Sebastian Collberg, who checks in at 5’11”, 175 lbs.

We also saw a little nastiness at the end, a sweet reminder that Sweden and Russia aren’t exactly crazy about each other. Maybe it goes back to the late 1700s when the two were at war and St. Petersburg was forced to build a beautiful fortress to keep the blond-haired foreigners from sailing down the Neva river and pillaging and doing other nasty deeds.

Good day for hockey. Two junior tilts and the Habs clashing with the Senators. Makes it hard to fit in grocery shopping, which is going to happen anyway, as long as the car starts.

So it’ll be Sweden against either Canada or Finland. Now I’m forced to drive Luci to the Russian grocery store in Brossard so she can pick up some fish and kalbasa. I’m sticking with cheeseburgers.

Below, St. Petersburg’s Peter Paul Fortress. I have an original nail from the Fortress, which Luci’s son Denis found near the top of the steeple when he was helping to fix it up.

That’s a great piece, Dennis. As I recall, though, the Soviets were already out of medal contention, and the Canadians were cruising to a win in that game, and I think that the Russian kids initiated the brawl, probably to prevent their (then) arch-enemy from winning the gold medal as well.

If the IIHF has any consistency, they will suspend all players involved in the fighting after the game. Unfortunately the referees didn’t have the balls to assess any fighting penalties. As usual the rules are mostly there to only penalize our teams. At least they’re no longer changing the rules after the competition is over just to take away our medals.